Okay rant vs praise time. SUPERNATURAL continues to dissapoint. The last episode has Dean meet himself in the future and his future self does not know why he doesn't remember nor is that addressed...how come he doesn't know what happened to his past self? I mean to be honest I wasn't paying enough attention to this old hat premise which was stuck onto another old hat premise of zombie town which was something they did at least twice already in past episodes. Added to that the "bad" angel Zach sent Dean forward in time, he should had realized there was an ulterior motive or at least thought the whole thing was a trick and not be bothered by it. It gives a sad glimpse as to what Sam might becomes but the whole thing is done so matter of fact that only the guy who plays Sam makes it worth anything for his acting as the Devil is any good. Oh yeah the Devil's in it and is about as scary as a bowl of chocolate pudding. The show sucks now. It has no meaning, no merit, nothing. And it's rumored God will make an appearance and I"m sure they will screw that up too. It's apparent that if the ratings are any good that people watch any old garbage as long as two good looking guys are in it. It's a morbid piece of junk so far removed from the first and second seasons...it's almost not the same show I can't believe that THIS was the five year plan the creator had. Le'ts hope...or maybe it's just me hoping...that FIVE is the end. I get a sinking feeling if the ratings are good they will go for six or seven or eight or nine or ten as the horrid SMALLVILLE had done.

FRINGE is just as poor. FRINGE in its first season resembled an early X FILES season mixed with some of the greatness of season four and five, definitely seasons 1,2 and 3 as well. Yet it was better. It had the old guy who make some humor enter the show in his comments, his outlook on life and his rapport with Pacey from DAWSON'S CREEK, who was surprisingly good in this. The entire cast was great and the stories seemed to make a sort of sense and set up some mysteries. The last episode set up a parallel world storyline in such open frankness that I knew it would end up jumping the shark in the next episode. Sure enough, we now have something akin to X FILES seasons 8 and 9 only NOT AS GOOD! We have super soldiers jumping out of windows in plain daylight, we have Leonard Nimoy and other character actors as insiders who give Olivia info. We have Olivia in hospital. Oh and a trip to Iraq. WTF happened to this show when no one was looking...and I'm sure in a few weeks no one will be looking. In addition, we now have aliens that want to take over all of us and annihiliate all of us. Well, which is it to be? I don't care and don't know and won't be watching any longer. It's jumped the shark totally. And all the humor that was nice in the first season is now forced and boring.

On the flip side to all the poor shows (besides SMALLVILLE, FRINGE, and SUPERNATURAL, we have all the LAW AND ORDERS, all the CSIs, BONES' continued boredeom and trickery of audiences, the falling HOUSE, tepid doctor shows, an amazingly poor MENTALIST, a no longer funny BIG BANG THEORY, the long ago jumped the shark shows of LOST and HEROES--zeroes, ONE TREE HILL---omg, kill that show already!, almost all of SyFy's shows including that awful SANCTUARY and WAREHOUSE BONES 13 and I'm sad to say EUREKA) we have GHOST WHISPERER and MEDIUM.

GHOST has always been better than MEDIUM. I"m not sure why. I think it is more emotional and personable and less of a format than MEDIUM or maybe the format fits the human aspects better than MEDIUM's reliance on killings and serial killers and murders and such. Either way, both shows, to me, seemed as if they would be tired and old hat. When I heard Melinda was going to get a five year old son and they would jump into the future five years ala the tepid ALIAS (which jumped the shark then and there) and the atrocious DESPERATE HOUSESLUTS, I thought okay this show is going to Jump the Shark with capitals. It didn't. The actor they chose for the five year old Aiden is so good I'm amazed at how good. The storylines don't overdo the son thing and the first one actually had a great story and tense action. The second episode this season had a ghostly email chain with a few twists in the offing. This show, like MEDIUM, is still worth watching. There are also mysteries set up for the future and it almost always makes sense on this show unlike SUPERNATURAL.

MEDIUM is still a strange beast. Not knowing who was leaving the show and who wasn't I was sure that Allison's daughter was going to go to jail and epossessed by a victim of a stripper! who was murdered by a family man and this ghost wanted revenge and was going to use Allison's daughter to kill the man---one of the girl's friend's fathers! ON top of that Allison knew her daughter was possessed and to stop the spirit from committing murder, Allison framed her own daugther to go to jail for a very long time! A tour de force for the young teen actress playing Allison's daughter and she's up for the task. Part of the reason for the show's sometimes lameness is the entire go to sleep and dream bits and this is now replaced by Allison having daytime while standing dreams! In addition, in the past, husband Joe was always complaining and not taking her side. He still seems to be doing that but at least he's asking questions rather than just shutting out all the supernatural stuff. One can't really blame him. Over the past six years, he's had his wife haunted by his own father, sleep walk out into traffic, delcare the end of the world was coming, be scared of a good buy-car, get possessed herself, had serial killers both alive and unalive troop through his house, and more...so on'e can't blame him for being a bit happy when Allison's powers were thought gone. They are not: they're back.

So MEDIUM and GHOST WHISPERER along with the thus far okay VAMPIRE DIARIES (I think) and the bewitchingly charming EASTWICK, surprisingly, ar all good to go for viewers who want to ditch the same old same old. These four are not perfect but they are better than all the crap mentioned above. I guess I"m still missing the summer shows RESCUE ME n TRUE BLOOD, where you can never tell what is going to happen. Oh and the kid's show THE TROOP might be worth catching.